JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Digital health innovations are high on international policy agendas, in the hope that they will help to address existing health system challenges.

Objective:

To explore the set-up, design, facilities, and strategic priorities of leading U.K. and U.S. healthcare innovation centres in order to identify transferable lessons for accelerating the creation and maximising the impact of these.

Methods:

We conducted qualitative case studies consisting of semi-structured audio-recorded interviews with decision makers and centre staff in six innovation centres. We also conducted non-participant observations of meetings and centre tours, where we took field notes. Qualitative data were analysed initially within and then across cases facilitated by NVivo software.

Results:

Centres had different institutional arrangements including university-associated institutes/innovation labs, business accelerators/incubators, and academic health science partnership models. We conducted interviews with 34 individuals, one group interview with three participants, and observed four meetings. Although centres differed significantly in relation to mission and structure/governance, we observed key common characteristics. These included high-level leadership support and incentives to engage in innovation activities, a clear mission to address identified gaps within their respective organisational and health system settings, physical spaces that facilitated networking through open-door policies, flat managerial structures characterised by new organisational roles for which boundary spanning was key, and a wider innovation ecosystem that was strategically and proactively engaged with the centre facilitating external partnerships.

Conclusions:

Although innovation in healthcare settings is unpredictable, we offer insights that may help those establishing innovation centres in healthcare settings. Key in this respect is the ability to support different kinds of innovations at different stages through adequate support structures, including the development of new career pathways.